


Grande Finale

by miniconsuffrage, technoxenoholic



Category: Transformers: Beast Machines, Transformers: Beast Wars
Genre: Assigned Soulmates At Death, Canon Compliant, Canon-Typical Violence, Enemies to Strangers to Friends to Lovers, M/M, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Past Character Death, Post-Canon Reincarnation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-03
Updated: 2019-10-03
Packaged: 2020-11-22 19:42:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,460
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20879645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/miniconsuffrage/pseuds/miniconsuffrage, https://archiveofourown.org/users/technoxenoholic/pseuds/technoxenoholic
Summary: “Seems we’re stuck with each other even in death, old friend.”Depth Charge awakens in the afterlife. He’s greeted by a familiar face—unfortunately, Rampage and Depth Charge dying together has bound their sparks together in the Matrix. Infuriated, Depth Charge opts not to stay in the afterlife, and instead be reincarnated on a technorganic Cybertron…





	Grande Finale

**Author's Note:**

> Fic title from [Grande Finale by the Studio Killers](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Chv4fogTrzI).
> 
> Additional writing input by [Monstrosibee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monstrosibee) and [Vullet](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vullet); beta read by [swave](https://archiveofourown.org/users/swave). Updates may be slow; we are all very busy, so please be kind.

Depth Charge is floating.

The slow current of water tugs at him gently, the weight of it comforting in its familiarity. He can’t seem to find which way is up and which is down, and yet he doesn’t find it concerning. Finally, in the Matrix, he feels entirely free.

“Seems we’re stuck with each other even in death, old friend.”

Depth Charge’s optics come sharply online. He curls in his fins, sharply, and the water rushes around him as he puts distance between himself and the one speaking. Except that he can't seem to do that after all—the figure stays, magnetized to Depth Charge at arm’s length, and laughs at his attempt to escape. The image of him vibrates for an instant before settling on a distinct red-hued form with a horrible face.

_Rampage,_ the water supplies in the mechanism’s own voice—and then shortly after _Protoform X,_ in Depth Charge’s_ usual_ internal narrator.

“What are _you_ doing here?” Depth Charge demands. He feels angry and hurt, all at once.

X puts a hand on his chest in mock offense. “Me? What about _you?”_ he says. His strange-looking mouth doesn’t even move. “You killed me, not the other way around.”

He seems happy about that. Depth Charge can feel the echoes of it, and it only makes him angrier.

“Your wretched spark was nothing but a ticking time bomb,” he says. “I only sped it up.”

“And paid the price,” says Rampage. “What a shame.” He cocks his head and gestures with both hands. “But I’m not complaining.”

“You _will_ be.”

Depth Charge throws himself at X—this time the water does as he wants, and carries them together. But the punch he throws misses its mark. They collide, chest to chest, and tumble through the unmoving water.

Rampage laughs and winds his arms around Depth Charge. He squeezes, and between the crushing pressure and the bizarre fluttering feeling that tastes thick and syrupy on the back of his tongue and the core of his spark, Depth Charge wouldn’t be able to breathe if he needed to.

“Why fight?” Rampage asks. “We can hug things out instead.”

Disgusted, Depth Charge elbows X in the head.

It’s enough to loosen Rampage’s grip, giving Depth Charge the space he needs to wriggle free. He turns and holds himself at the ready, just waiting for Rampage to try again, but Rampage stays put. Depth Charge takes the moment of peace to take in his surroundings, with his optics online this time.

There isn’t much that’s distinct enough to describe. He feels the water flowing around him, and much like the ocean, visibility drops off and fades to nothingness. He feels… a sort of consciousness. He knows where he is. He knows he is dead, and remembers dying. None of that bothers him.

What bothers him is the presence before him, as real as he always has been.

“Why are you here?” Depth Charge demands again. He doesn’t expect Rampage to have an answer, but he’s _angry._ This is a far cry from the stories of the afterspark he’d always been told. It was supposed to be a place of peace, oneness. Depth Charge hardly feels at peace right now.

Rampage just shrugs. “Your guess is as good as mine, fins,” he says. “But again, I’m not complaining.”

This can’t be it. Depth Charge refuses to believe he’s going to spend the rest of eternity here. He tries moving away again, slower this time, but it changes nothing—he can feel the water moving around him, but Rampage stays exactly the same distance from him, and nothing new comes into view.

Rampage just watches him, head cocked to the side just slightly. This is not it, Depth Charge silently vows. It’s bad enough that fragger’s face was the last thing Depth Charge saw before he died. It will _not_ be the only thing he sees from now on.

“You’re so _angry,”_ says Rampage, finally. Because of course he can feel these things, still. Or maybe it’s just written on Depth Charge’s face. Either way, the glee that should be in Rampage’s tone when he says it… isn’t. “Why? You should be happy now. I’m dead. You’ve had your revenge.” He tries to move closer—he fails. His mouth isn’t made for pouting, but he seems to try. “Unless… you meant to live?”

Depth Charge considers that. He doesn’t remember meaning much of anything, except for the motion that killed them both in the end. But, still…

“I meant to kill you,” he says. “Not to be _trapped_ with you forever.”

“You would rather have sent me here alone,” says Rampage. Those words shouldn’t _ache_ the way they do, bitter and acrid.

Depth Charge growls and turns his back. That, at least, seems to work. And it’s not like Rampage can kill him again.

Rampage, to Depth Charge’s surprise, doesn’t make a move. He stands there, almost as if he expected this reaction of the Maximal. 

“Go away,” Depth Charge tells him. He hears nothing in response. He can feel Rampage’s gaze on his back, can feel _so much_ that it’s overwhelming, and he can’t stand it, and he can’t stay still. He transforms and swims, resisting the desire to look back.

Swimming is a wholly different experience than flying ever was, and deep down, Depth Charge prefers swimming. The water flowing across his plating is almost relaxing, a comforting presence rather than a threat. In the air, a small mistake can lead to a deadly crash. In the ocean, Depth Charge doesn’t need to worry so much.

Depth Charge swims, and the feeling of overwhelm fades somewhat. So does Rampage’s presence. The solitude is a relief. He finally has the space to think.

So Rampage is in the afterspark. Of course he is—where else would he go? This _is_ what Depth Charge wanted, what he’d been working towards this whole time. Himself dying in the process is no great loss. It hadn’t been his goal, but he wouldn’t have done anything differently, given the chance. X is dead. Depth Charge has avenged everyone who died at his hand.

It just doesn’t seem fair Depth Charge has to share his afterlife with him. If the Well of All Sparks were kinder, it would keep Rampage far away from him. But then, Depth Charge doesn’t expect any part of the universe to be kind anymore.

Depth Charge feels something nudging at him, at his consciousness. It isn’t Rampage this time, with his presence so heavy Depth Charge fears being crushed by it. No, this is… different. Farther away, less personal. Calmer. 

_There is no use dwelling on what you cannot change_, it impresses on him. Well, what else is Depth Charge supposed to dwell on? He can’t change any of it, and he’s dead. 

The water currents buffet him some, and it’s the first change in environment he’s seen since he arrived here. Slowly, almost without him realizing it, his surroundings start to change. It starts with occasional spots of faded color, which grow more defined until he’s able to recognize a hunk of coral from Earth’s oceans, and in moments the scene is transformed. It’s like he’s back there, complete with fish swimming by.

It’s peaceful. He relaxes, and lets himself slow. The water is bright now, warmed by the sun.

The place is almost familiar. Depth Charge squints at a ridge of coral, watching the fish dart in and out of it as he glides past. Has he been here before?

He spots an oddly cracked rock, and it dawns on him that he has. This is a place—one of many, many places—where he found X lurking. This is a place where they fought. A bitter taste fills Depth Charge’s mouth. This is a place where he failed, yet again, to kill his nemesis. Maybe if he had managed it then, he wouldn’t be here now, stuck with that devil in an afterspark that’s beginning to feel more like the pits of the inferno, even despite the water.

Naturally, when Depth Charge crests the next ridge, there Rampage is again. Right where he was the first time.

The manta stops, and prepares to turn the other way and leave again. But X turns first. He _brightens_ when he sees Depth Charge, perking up and standing from the odd crouch of before. Depth Charge stares at him, with no idea how to proceed with this… thing. This horrible situation. The water is suddenly sweeter, and to Depth Charge, the impression is sickly.

"Welcome back," says Rampage. He makes a face that might almost be a grin and spreads his arms wide. "I love the new decor. Was that you?"

Depth Charge could leave again. There’s nothing stopping him.

“Not intentionally,” he says. He transforms back to root mode, just in case X decides to try anything. It feels less like transforming and more like_ becoming_—Depth Charge thinks, and then he is. His feet meet the sea floor _without _thinking about it.

“Very smooth,” Rampage remarks.

Depth Charge scowls at him. “I don’t need your running commentary, X.”

“Well, it’s not like there’s much else to do.” Rampage sways a little in place. “We could always fight, of course, but I think we’ve done enough of that.”

Part of Depth Charge almost agrees with him, but the rest of him thinks it can’t be worse than _this_. At least if they fought, he would be on familiar ground.

“You would say that, knowing you won’t win,” he says.

Rampage cocks his head to the side, and the aroma of delight coming off of him makes the thought of punching him rather appealing. “How’s that?”

Depth Charge folds his arms over his chest. “You always had an unfair advantage. But I still won in the end,” he says. “I brought you in, and I killed you. If I could beat you when we were alive, I can beat you now that we’re on an equal playing field.”

“Hmm. That’s an interesting way of looking at it,” X replies. “I’m not sure I’d call something that was forced on me an unfair advantage.”

“You sure didn’t have any problem taking full advantage of it.” Depth Charge doesn’t have enough fingers to count the number of times he’s seen Rampage walk directly into a weapon because it put him in a good position to retaliate.

“Well, I didn’t want to have gone through all that for nothing,” Rampage says. “And you may have killed us _both_, but if my math is right—statistically, I won.”

For a moment, Depth Charge feels the familiar stab of anger he’s always felt when he talks to X for too long. He _wants_ to fight, in that moment, but in the next, he’s hit with how pointless this is. Rampage is goading him, because he’s dead and has nothing better to do, and Depth Charge doesn’t have to put up with it.

So he doesn’t respond. He jumps up, transforms, and swims away, leaving Rampage and a distinct savory tinge of disappointment behind him.

The setting eventually dissolves into the same endless, unchanging ocean it had been before, but Depth Charge doesn’t stop moving. He focuses on that, and on the sensation of water flowing over his plating, and tries to find some sense of calm.

Eventually, it is quiet, both without and within. Eventually Depth Charge manages to settle. 

He walked right into that one. He shouldn’t allow Rampage to get to him like that, especially not _now_, after all this time. Depth Charge _has_ won, no matter what Rampage says, and that’s something to be proud of. Even if it did land him here.

_Here is what you make of it_, the voice whispers to him. Depth Charge almost laughs. Being stuck here for the rest of eternity knowing that Rampage can pop up and bother him is the pit, no matter what Depth Charge tries to make of it.

But… when he’s out here by himself, he can see how the experience might be pleasant otherwise. Calming, even. 

He lets his mind drift, and doesn’t make much of an effort to follow where it goes. 

It goes nowhere, for a while, winding in the same old circles for a long, long moment. He’s here, he’s dead, he won, and it’s more horrible than he ever expected. But eventually, thinking about what it could have been, it trails off in another direction.

The afterspark is _meant_ to be peaceful, and the pit is not. There’s no way he can be in both places, so he must be in the afterspark after all. But then how, again, can X be here?

And he’s back in the cycle again. He’s here with _Rampage_ and that, to put it bluntly, _sucks._

His surroundings start to change again, but this time Depth Charge catches on more quickly. He continues, because he doubts turning around will make any sort of difference, but he goes warily, hyper-aware of everything around him. 

An ocean bed rises up, and then shifts into a different color and material. It’s rocky, now, and pink vines and moss start to crop up, sticking to the larger rocks. Depth Charge doesn’t realize he knows the place until he passes a huge tree, having broken free from the rocky ground and risen far above.

Of course, there is Rampage. He stands next to the tree with a hand on it, looking out onto a field full of those vines, in the middle of which is Depth Charge’s ship.

He turns, having heard or felt Depth Charge.

“There you are!” he greets, and gestures to the tree and the field. “I figured out how to do what you did. What do you think? You remember this one, right?” Depth Charge would have been able to hear the pride in Rampage’s voice even if he couldn’t feel it coming off of him in waves. It’s sweet and sickening, again.

Depth Charge can remember the place, but not well. He’d chased X down to the surface of so many planets he’d lost count of them all. 

Rampage takes his silence as an answer. “I’m not surprised. I waited here for nearly two deca-cycles for you to find me,” he chuckles. “It wasn’t a bad place to hole up. Pretty dull until you showed up, of course.”

Depth Charge snorts. “Don’t tell me you got tired of eating the defenseless wildlife that quickly.”

“There _was_ no wildlife,” Rampage tells him. “Nothing but plants.” He laughs. “It was a regular paradise once _you_ got there.”

Depth Charge doesn’t want to be reminded of X’s obsession with taunting him, his incessant baiting. He growls and stalks off again.

“Come on, Fins, we can’t avoid each other forever,” Rampage calls after him.

But that’s exactly what Depth Charge hopes to do. He’s done with chasing X across the galaxy. It lasted more than long enough.

Hunting down Protoform X would have been so much easier, done so much more quickly, if not for X’s _glee_ over the whole affair. He always seemed so pleased with himself when Depth Charge caught up, so excited to return to their unending fight. Depth Charge wanted X dead and X _enjoyed_ it, and Depth Charge never could tell if he was driven by sadism, masochism, or some unholy combination of the two.

Either way, every time—right back to the first time—every time Depth Charge caught up to X, the bastard welcomed him.

He’s long wished that X’s perverse obsession with him had never existed, so that Depth Charge could have just locked him up and had him killed and been _done_ with it. He still wishes he could undo all the damage X left in his wake, all the lives lost…

The water around him slowly, imperceptibly darkens until it is pitch black, and stars blink into existence, one by one. Depth Charge doesn’t know what it is until he sees the space station ahead of him, and it makes him feel sick.

How many times has he dreamed of coming back to this moment, of doing it all over again and saving everyone? Omicron was a mistake that Depth Charge had already determined to avenge, but Rugby was just rubbing salt in a wound.

The current carries him forward. The explosion has already gone off, leaving the station in two pieces. Depth Charge doesn’t see the bodies this time, when he goes inside.

He does see X, as always. He looks like he’s trying, unsuccessfully, to wipe spilled energon off his chestplate when Depth Charge approaches. Depth Charge is so angry, so sick, that he can’t get a reading on X. All he knows is the sight of him makes Depth Charge want to explode. 

X watches him carefully as Depth Charge transforms and lands on the floor of the station. He twitches when X shifts his stance, but says nothing.

“This is a little dark for you, isn’t it, fins?” X asks.

Depth Charge lets out a loud, primal snarl and lunges at him.

Rampage catches him, hand to hand, in a grapple they’ve both gotten too used to. What’s less familiar is the way Rampage doesn’t fight _back—_he counters every blow Depth Charge throws at him and yet doesn’t make his own in return, and it’s too much. Desperate for a proper response to his anger, Depth Charge yells something that isn’t a word, a furious sound, and tries to gash X’s face open with claws he doesn’t have

X laughs at him. “I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch that.”

Depth Charge backhands him with all the force he can muster. Rampage staggers; Depth Charge chases after him and kicks him to the ground. “Everyone I ever cared about is dead because of _you,”_ he growls, punctuating the statement with a blow to the face. “They were _innocent_. They didn’t even know you existed until you _slaughtered them.”_ The puddle Rampage has fallen into now coats him even more with energon, and the sight of it just makes Depth Charge angrier. 

X catches his fist to stop his next blow, but that doesn’t stop Depth Charge. He drops his full weight into driving his elbow into X’s abdominal plating, and X hisses in pain. “Did that make you happy?” Depth Charge demands, louder. “Did it bring you joy to extinguish all those innocent sparks? Or did you just do it to make me miserable?”

“Oh, I did it to get your attention, old friend,” says Rampage.

_“You already had it,”_ Depth Charge roars, taking hold of the side of Rampage’s face and slamming his head into the ground. “I was already playing your twisted game! What more could you have wanted from me?”

Rampage just laughs his horrible, wheezing laugh at him, and it tastes like regret and self-loathing.

Depth Charge slugs Rampage in the face again for good measure. It stops his laughter, but it doesn’t make him talk. Depth Charge bellows; he’s _livid_ with X, furious with him for daring to laugh off this tragedy of his own making, for tasting like smug self-satisfaction through the burn of all of Depth Charge’s hatred and grief.

But fighting is doing no good. It isn’t making Depth Charge feel any better, and he’s practically gagging on all the conflicted emotions in the water. He turns and leaves again, leaves Rampage lying in a heap on the ground.

The next two times Depth Charge stumbles across Rampage, he keeps swimming. He doesn’t stop, and Rampage doesn’t try to stop him.

The time after that, Depth Charge doesn’t realize he’s around until he scurries out from under a rock on the recently-fabricated sea floor in beast mode. “Are you finished moping yet?” he asks, but his words don’t match the waves of feeling Depth Charge gets off of him. Something that tastes like… nervousness, maybe. Depth Charge doesn’t examine it. He keeps swimming.

After that, they meet on the mountain where Depth Charge captured Rampage the first time. He’s sitting on the boulder Depth Charge crushed him under. “Depth Charge!” he calls. “Want to reenact some history?”

Depth Charge swims by.

Then, the scene shifts back to Earth’s ocean floor. The Nemesis looms, dark and huge in the murky depths beyond, but Rampage is here, lying there with his hands behind his head, looking up. Exactly where they both died, Depth Charge realizes. Rampage says nothing this time, and Depth Charge doesn’t stop. 

It keeps happening—a never-ending cycle Depth Charge cannot escape. He leaves, and Rampage does not follow, but Depth Charge finds himself pulled back anyway. Maybe this is only a natural consequence. All the time Depth Charge spent hunting Rampage down, thinking of little else, and now he can’t figure out how to do anything but. 

He wants it to end, desperately. Oblivion would be better than this, surely.

_Oblivion is a state of mind_, the presence reminds him, tirelessly. _Clear your thoughts._

Depth Charge has already tried that. It always, inevitably, leads back to Rampage. He wishes none of this had ever happened. He wishes he could go back in time and stop all this from happening—could stop the Maximals from creating that freak of nature, or have him diverted somewhere else. Or even to stop himself from ever speaking to Protoform X. Maybe if he’d just done his job with no distractions…

The scene starts to shift, and Depth Charge is powerless to stop it. He’s learned that much. He’s swimming down a hallway that feels both achingly familiar and a million light years away. He stops at the door. He could turn away and reject this memory, but he’s here now. It will keep coming for him. 

Depth Charge shifts to root mode and hits the keypad to open the door. The room he walks into is just as it was the first time he’d seen it, and the hundreds of times afterwards. Spacious, well-lit, medical and scientific equipment to one side. And a cell covering the length of the far wall.

Behind the bars, predictably, is Rampage. Protoform X. And he looks just like he did back then. For a moment Depth Charge wonders whether this X is the real thing or only an artifact of his memory, but he can taste now-familiar amusement emanating from the other end of the room, and Depth Charge couldn’t do that before he ended up here. 

He lets the memory steer him forward at a leisurely pace until he’s standing in front of the bars. X waits on the other side for him. “Good morning, officer,” he says. The delight coming off him is palpable. “Any news?”

“Since yesterday? No,” Depth Charge says. He can feel a split, now, and it takes him a moment to process it—it’s like there are two layers, one above and one below. On one layer, he can feel himself as he is in the present. He feels his baseline anger and frustration whenever presented with X, but especially in his current predicament, and he feels X’s perverse joy.

On the other layer…. he feels himself as he was when he first experienced this moment. Guarded, suspicious, but not _unhappy_. For this version of himself, checking up on X’s security measures is just a small part of his job. Talking with the experiment for a few minutes while he does so every day is not much of a hardship. It is not significant. It just is.

The cognitive dissonance threatens to overtake him for a moment, but the memory moves along anyway.

“Aw,” X says. “There must be something. What about the cube finals?”

“That was a deca-cycle ago,” Depth Charge says. He’s tapping on a screen that’s angled away from X’s line of vision, scrolling through readouts on the structural integrity of the cell. He can see most of these remotely, but he doesn’t always trust the signal. Omicron is far away from Cybertron, and their technology is older. “Have you ever seen a game of cube?”

“No,” Rampage says. “It sounds fun. We should watch one together sometime.” Depth Charge doesn’t feel the same dissonance from X. At this moment, the two versions of him are nearly identical: uncomfortably happy to see Depth Charge. He’s never going to eat sweets again.

Depth Charge snorts, and then feels disgusted with himself. “Cube isn’t really my thing,” he says.

“Then what is?” X prods. Something shifts, just the tiniest bit—so small Depth Charge almost doesn’t notice it. Desperation, he thinks, or maybe anxiety, coming from the Rampage who hadn’t yet taken everything Depth Charge loved away from him. “There must be something you like to do for fun. Besides coming to visit me, anyway.”

“Ha,” Depth Charge says humorlessly. “Nothing you’d enjoy, I’m sure.” He’s finished with everything he needs to do here for the day, and takes a step away from the cell.

“Try me,” X says, and the desperation grows, but now it’s overlayed with something stronger—a feeling of dread, coming from the other Protoform X.

“I’ll see you tomorrow, X,” Depth Charge says, and turns.

The door opens in front of him, and Apelinq walks through it. Depth Charge remembers now why he’d cut off the conversation where he had—he preferred not to cross paths with the Maximal scientist if he could help it. For reasons he couldn’t name, the mech gave him the creeps.

That’s the last thought Depth Charge has before the whole room starts to convulse. The picture is distorted beyond recognition, colors smear, the water tastes like battery acid, and Depth Charge cannot think. He can only experience the blind panic that barrages him from all sides, churning his internal systems into a nauseating knot.

He’s stuck there for longer than he would like, not knowing who or where he is, but finally a thought takes hold of him—this is not _his._

With that realization, Depth Charge is able to mentally shove the scene away, and after a violent lurch, it dissipates. Depth Charge is back in the unending calm waters of the afterspark, back to the way he looked when he died, and so is Rampage.

“What was that?” Depth Charge demands. The imprint of that fear, anger, and hurt still presses in on his consciousness and his vision, a mech-shaped swirl of distress where the memory has subsided.

Rampage does not move. He stands, frozen stiff, staring at the spot where Apelinq had been. 

“X,” Depth Charge snaps, and Rampage… flinches. But he’s looking at Depth Charge now, and Depth Charge realizes with a start that the nervous energy coursing through him isn’t just a memory of what had just happened—it’s what Rampage is still feeling now.

“I don’t know what it was,” Rampage lies, as clear as day. 

“You’re full of slag,” Depth Charge says, taking a step forward, and Rampage immediately takes one back. Then another, and another, and then he turns and— 

And he swims away.

_He_ leaves. Depth Charge is already shaken up, and this just makes it worse. Rampage only runs when he’s bored, to taunt Depth Charge, but this… is not that. He doesn’t know what to do with it. There’s nowhere to go. He certainly isn’t going to go after Rampage.

So… he sits. 

He waits. Just as Rampage had, ever since they first got here. He steadies himself, and feels the currents caress his frame, and tries to embrace that oblivion which the presence has insisted is within his reach.

Time is meaningless here, but for a short while, Depth Charge thinks he finds it.

And then, inevitably, Rampage returns to him.

He tastes him before he sees him—hesitant, wary and unsure. They aren’t emotions Depth Charge has ever associated with Rampage before. But there is no one else here, just Rampage and himself and the presence, which is disembodied and as tasteless as a freshwater river, far away and omnipresent simultaneously.

Rampage approaches slowly, walking along the sands at the bottom of the afterlife’s ocean in his beast mode, too many legs creating little craters as he goes. Depth Charge watches him, unmoving. Waiting for what he will do. 

But Rampage just slows to a stop and looks up at him, pitifully, from the sand. After a minute he shuffles and burrows halfway into it.

It’s so uncharacteristic that Depth Charge can only stare.

Rampage stares back at him. “I couldn’t get away from you, either,” he says. There’s a sullenness to it. “Not that I ever could.”

“If that’s what you wanted, you shouldn’t have killed everyone I ever knew,” Depth Charge says. His voice is hoarse, but calmer than he expected.

“Would it have made a difference?” Rampage asks. “You were already after me.”

“Of course it would have.” Despite the harshness, he’s not completely sure. Depth Charge levels a glare at the crab, who seems to have sunk even farther into the sand. “I _almost_ understood you, X. I thought I knew _why. _Until that.”

Rampage shifts just slightly, reminiscent of his head cocking to the side, which displaces some of the sand. “If you understood me, why did you want to bring me back to them?” he asks. His words are not accusatory. He wants to know, Depth Charge realizes. He genuinely doesn’t know.

“You killed a lot of people,” Depth Charge says, slowly, to make himself understood. “People that were my responsibility to protect.”

“They killed me first.”

Depth Charge isn’t sure what to say to that. He could argue the point that X didn’t _die_ until now, until Depth Charge managed to finally, finally kill him. But the _conviction_ in X’s words has floored him; from Rampage’s point of view, they really did kill him first.

He’s not sure if Rampage means that literally. He’s not sure if that matters, in X’s twisted worldview.

“What about Rugby?” he asks instead.

Rampage doesn’t respond at first. He transforms—Depth Charge watches, warily, as Rampage steps carefully around him, just out of arm’s reach, and sits across from him. He wraps his arms around his knees and the absurd pincers and kibble on his back draw in tight. There’s still sand stuck on him.

“I told you,” says X, “I wanted your attention. So I took it from them.”

Depth Charge is disgusted. “I _despise_ you,” he spits.

Rampage laughs at him again. It’s humorless this time. “I could tell.”

Depth Charge doesn’t like this. He doesn’t like how comfortable X feels. He wants to get out of here.

The presence in the water reminds him that he can.

_Clear your thoughts. Move on._

But it isn’t that easy.

_It can be._

Across from him, X grimaces. “I wish that voice would mind its own business,” he says.

So it’s not just Depth Charge. Maybe the answer to the mystery is that they were all wrong—maybe there is no afterspark, no inferno. Maybe there is just _this_. A neutral zone. A holding cell for them to spend the rest of eternity.

That still doesn’t explain why X is here with him.

“Maybe you should listen to it,” Depth Charge says, even though he’s spent enough time arguing with it himself.

Rampage gives him an unreadable look, though the taste in the water makes his apprehension clear anyway. “You just want to be rid of me again.”

“And?” Depth Charge asks.

Rampage rests his head on his knees and shrugs. In a muted way, it infuriates Depth Charge. The anger is there, as it always is, but as he sits here, it feels… far away. 

“What do you want?” Depth Charge demands. After everything he’s been through, he deserves to know that much. If X is capable of wanting anything but destruction and pain, now, when they’re both dead, is the only time Depth Charge will ever find out.

Rampage takes a long time to answer, but eventually, it does come. “Not this.”

Depth Charge snorts, short and bitter. “There, we agree.”

And then, everything shifts, like the world suddenly spinning around on its axis. They both start at the same time.

_Would you like to leave?_

The presence has no physical embodiment, but Depth Charge looks around anyway, hoping for some sort of explanation, and finds none. Only Rampage, sitting across from him, looking as puzzled as he feels. Their eyes meet. Rampage is probably thinking the same thing he is.

They can leave?

_Yes,_ he thinks back at it urgently. Yes, of course he wants to leave.

And then the water is gone, and Rampage is gone, and Depth Charge wakes to a blinding light.


End file.
